MISSING DOG? GIVE ME YOUR BITCOIN OR THE POOCH GETS IT

Remember the Nigerian bank scams from back in the day? Those ran on email, fax and the like. But those are all old school scams. Now we have scam artists who try to bilk people out of their bitcoin. Bitcoin scams seem to be all the rage, especially as they are hard to trace. But now we have a scam artist who has no shame whatsoever. Last weekend a basset hound, Happy, went missing in the Tar Heel state of North Carolina. A missing dog is not unusual. But what’s not so usual and not to be loved is that a scumbag scam artist contacted Happy’s owner and tried to ransom the missing dog for some hundreds of dollars in bitcoin. Or else.

WOMAN ON TO SCAM ARTIST AS SHE ALREADY HAD HER MISSING DOG BACK

Just knowing about this pissed me off. But Happy’s owner, Patricia Howell, didn’t fall for the scam. Why? She already had Happy safe and sound back at home. Howell found her missing dog Happy the same day that Happy got lost. A tip on a community Facebook page reconnected her to her droopy pooch (side note: Facebook was good for something!). So Howell went out, got her dog Happy, and brought the wayward hound back home. But just minutes after returning with Happy she got a text message. And the message was outrageous. It said they had her dog and they would “sell it or kill it or whatever” if they didn’t receive six hundred dollars in bitcoin in five days.

ONLY A SCUMBAG WOULD FAKE RANSOM A MISSING DOG

Give me your bitcoin, or the dog gets it! The scumbag scam artist said once they received the funds that they would leave happy at some pet store with Howell’s information. But Howell knew something was off. She already had her dog! “I knew it was a scam because I had Happy, but it was heartless and cold and it was so mean-spirited,” she said to local media. This scam artist used either Howell’s Facebook post or the site Pawboost, which is a lost and found site for dogs. The Sheriff of Granville County is investigating, especially as he’s aware of other ransom missing dog cases. Let’s wish she Sheriff success and fast. That scam artist is a scumbag.